North Korea conducts nuclear test – “North Korea says it has has staged a “successful” underground nuclear test, prompting international condemnation…”

‘Bone putty’ holds it together – “An all star research team is developing a putty-like material to help regenerate shattered bones, a technology that could allow soldiers to avoid amputation and quickly regain full use of badly broken legs…”

Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation – “America’s richest people meet to discuss ways of tackling a ‘disastrous’ environmental, social and industrial threat…”

Pigeons: The Next Step in Local Eating (No, Really) – “At a time when rising demand for meat across the globe endangers the food system, and local eating has gained millions of (T-shirt wearing) adherents, it’s time to reconsider our assumptions about what protein sources are considered OK to eat…”

What are the UFOs in this video? For an explanation see this article on flares:

How to send electricity across the continent, virtually for free. – “Remember the Woodstock of Physics? Probably not. Back in the spring of 1987, though, headlines were trumpeting it as the most exciting scientific meeting in history. Three thousand physicists crammed into a ballroom at the New York Hilton to talk about superconductivity-the transmission of electricity with literally zero resistance. The technology was suddenly within reach of being economical. So it appeared, anyway, and that could mean anything from superfast computers to tiny, powerful electric motors to power lines that could carry current with no loss of energy….”

Why Gene Patents Are Unlawful – “The lawsuit charges, as critics of gene patents have argued for years, that gene patents stifle biomedical research and interfere with patients’ access to genetic testing. The lawsuit argues that the patents on the BRCA genes are unconstitutional and invalid given the long-standing legal precedent that “products of nature” and “laws of nature” are not patentable. The suit also makes the novel argument that the practice of patenting genes, their correlations with disease, and the thought of comparing two genes violates the First Amendment and interferes with scientific freedom…”

Graffiti Building Art – Photos of some great “graffiti”…

Polar bears and dogs playing – “A strange relationship between dogs and bears…”

I Miss Iraq. I Miss My Gun. I Miss My War – “I’ve spent hours taking in the world through a rifle scope, watching life unfold. Women hanging laundry on a rooftop. Men haggling over a hindquarter of lamb in the market. Children walking to school. I’ve watched this and hoped that someday I would see that my presence had made their lives better, a redemption of sorts. But I also peered through the scope waiting for someone to do something wrong, so I could shoot him. When you pick up a weapon with the intent of killing, you step onto a very strange and serious playing field. Every morning someone wakes wanting to kill you. When you walk down the street, they are waiting, and you want to kill them, too. That’s not bloodthirsty; that’s just the trade you’ve learned…”

To sit or not to sit – Why men should stand to pee – “Western Europe is abuzz with the latest flare-up in the war between the sexes, and for the moment, the Amazons seem to be winning. If outrage continues to mount, it will soon be not just uncool and politically incorrect for a man to urinate while standing up, but out-and-out ILLEGAL…”

Data.gov – “The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government…”

A journey through the heart of Iran. – “The layers of contradiction that make up the modern Islamic Republic of Iran are both pervasive and confounding…”

WAAS Up? – “The Government Accountability Office, a Federal watchdog agency, reported on May 7th that the Global Positioning System of satellites used for navigation and many other business and scientific purposes as well as for proving that your teenage son was actually driving down the Interstate at 100 miles-per-hour last Thursday night when he claimed to be bowling, well that satellite system is in danger of becoming unusable because satellites are not being replaced quickly enough by the U.S. Air Force. Only it isn’t true.“

YouTube rocked by hackers’ ‘Porn Day’ – “In what is believed to have been a coordinated attack carried out by the infamous 4Chan group of hackers, clips containing nudity and sexual scenes were made available to the sites’ tens of millions of users.”

Meet Dr. Ecstasy – “Shulgin is responsible for at least 200 psychedelic compounds (which weren’t illegal when he created them, simply because the DEA hadn’t yet heard of them), is the author of a pair of memoir/cookbooks called PHiKAL and TiHKAL, short for “Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved” and “Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved,” respectively. But he is certainly most famous for reintroducing the world to a little-known compound called MDMA in 1976. It had been patented by Merck in 1914, but thinking it useless, the drug giant had never done anything with it. Shulgin resynthesized it, wrote a paper about it in which he noted ‘’an easily controlled altered state of consciousness with emotional and sensual overtones,” and the world had Ecstasy…”

Tim Berners-Lee on the next Web:

Man Gets Flat Tire, State Threatens Foreclosure – “A broken road reflector cost Paul Holden the price a new tire, and now it could cost him his home…”

Cat Cooler – “It was hot that day. Very hot. So hot that the cats were getting all melty. They also were seeking out the coolest spots they could find: lying on the wood floor instead of on the rug. Suddenly, I thought, hey— wouldn’t it be nice to give them an especially cool-feeling place to lie down on? Here was my first idea…”

Why don’t all whales have cancer? A novel hypothesis resolving Peto’s paradox – “Larger organisms have more potentially carcinogenic cells, tend to live longer and require more ontogenic cell divisions. Therefore, intuitively one might expect cancer incidence to scale with body size. Evidence from mammals, however, suggests that the cancer risk does not correlate with body size. This observation defines Peto’s paradox…”

Health Scan: Study shows depressed people see the world differently – “To investigate the effects of depression on visual perception, he developed a test that let him assess “the filling-in process” that a healthy mind performs when looking at objects. The researchers asked 27 control subjects and 32 patients hospitalized for depression to look at identical images and report what they saw. The control subjects were able to “see” missing parts, while the depressed ones were not…”

Don’t! – The secret of self-control. – “Once Mischel began analyzing the results, he noticed that low delayers, the children who rang the bell quickly, seemed more likely to have behavioral problems, both in school and at home. They got lower S.A.T. scores. They struggled in stressful situations, often had trouble paying attention, and found it difficult to maintain friendships. The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds…”

FCC’s Warrantless Household Searches Alarm Experts – “You may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it…”

Humans vs. Animals – “Every year scientists prove that some purely human traits are found in animals…”

The Million Dollar Programming Prize – “Netflix’s bounty for improving its movie-recommendation software is almost in the bag. Here is one team’s account…”

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